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ADDRESS 

====== OF THE ======== 

Hon. ELIHU ROOT, Secretary of War 

Delivered at a Meeting of the 1Hnion 
XeaQUe ClUb, held on the 6th day 
of February, \ 903, to Honor its J> 

FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



ADDRESS 



OF THE 

Honorable ELIHU ROOT 

SECRETARY OF WAR, 

DELIVERED AT A 

MEETING OF THE UNION LEAGUE 

CLUB, HELD ON THE 6th DAY 

OF FEBRUARY, 1903, 



TO HONOR ITS 



FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



T*ANSFERRED FROM 

PERIODICAL r '"^'"" > " , 

JUL 1 »I9 



^ 



Mr. President, Gentlemen of 1863, 

and Gentlemen of the Club : 

It is worth while coming from Washington, 
or even California, or the Philippines, to receive 
such a welcome. I will speak to-night for the 
younger members of the Clnb. Having been 
a member but thirty-four years, I look up with 
reverence to these old gentlemen. 

Length of life is little, but to have been a 
part of great affairs, to have done something 
in this world that will live, to have woven 
a thread into the fabric that is to last for ages 
— that is life — that is to have lived, though 
length of days be short ; and that, old friends, 
you did. We are grateful^ to you and we 
honor you for the opportunity which you so 
nobly seized and upon which you built so well. 

Happy men, the men of '61 to '65, to live 
to see the country they saved grown so great, 
not merely in material things, in manufactor- 
ies, in railroads, in steamships, and in marble 
buildings, but so great in all that dignifies and 
ennobles humanity. 

Happy men, to see the great war, which you 
helped so much to nerve our people to main- 



4 
tain for union and liberty, ended, and the 
spectacle of noblest manhood exhibited to the 
world by two sections that had fought so 
bitterly coming now together, with the kindli- 
ness of true American citizenship, and again 
together upholding the flag that stands for the 
liberty of all ; to see the curse of slavery re- 
moved and the Declaration of Independence 
made true at last for all our people ; to see the 
reflex action of our institutions upon Europe 
gradually changing the structure of govern- 
ments and lifting up across the sea the common 
people of all the countries of the world towards 
the dignity of manhood and their rightful 
participation in the fruits of the earth ; to see, 
what is true, that year by year coming out of 
the crucible of trial our public service has 
grown stronger, and purer, and better in its 
integrity and its devotion to public interests 
than ever before in all our history ; and to see 
our nation, grown so great and strong, still 
maintaining the principles of liberty and jus- 
tice, and stretching out its hands over the weak 
people of the earth and saying to the oppres- 
sors, "Hold." 

Happy men, to come out of that time of 



5 
doubt and trial and see all this. But the end 
is not yet. Your work was but little if you 
left none behind you to take it up. The old 
and trite saying, "Eternal vigilance is the 
price of liberty, " holds a broader and a greater 
truth, " Eternal good citizenship is the price 
of good government." There yet remain and 
there will ever come in unending succession 
problems, difficulties, doubts, struggles, on 
which the safety of our institutions will de- 
pend. There are to-day problems almost 
immeasurable which hold within them the 
possibilities of evil for our country, calling for 
the best citizenship, the most devout patriot- 
ism, and the hardest fibre. Eet me mention 
two or three. 

One is the tendency — growing, I fear — to 
division between the rich and the poor, under 
which wealth tends constantly to undue con- 
trol over legislation, and poverty to stir up a 
war of classes based upon envy and jealousy 
of the rich. The very results of our prosperity 
tend to increase this evil, and every good citi- 
zen should set his face against it and seek to 
make it certain that never in this free land 
shall we have a war of classes. 



Another thing, which is fraught with the 
most fatal consequences, if it proceeds, is the 
tendency to check individual enterprise and 
development. Individual opportunity, the 
chance that every poor boy has to exercise the 
talents that God has given him and to rise as 
high as man can go by his brain, by his indus- 
try, by his persistency, and by his courage, is 
the very foundation of American liberty. Yet 
many of the labor organizations in this country 
are including in their rules provisions against 
the better man doing more work, earning- 
more wages than the man less capable, and 
seeking to hold down industry, activity, and 
ambition to the level of sloth, of incompetency, 
of stupidity. I make no war against labor 
organizations ; I believe in them. I believe 
that in the great struggle for a fair division of 
the increased wealth of mankind that comes 
from the enormous increase of the productive 
power of mankind through invention and dis- 
covery, the laborer is bound to organize and 
entitled to organize, and I am glad to see him 
organize and get his own. But we all must 
set our faces against the tendency to say to 
any American boy k4 You shan't do the best 
von can." 



A third thing is one with which this Clnb 
may well be concerned. Our Chairman has 
referred to the march of the negro regiments 
down Broadway. Within two years after the 
foundation of this Club the nation, by the 
Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 
provided that slavery should not exist in the 
United States, or in any Territory under its 
jurisdiction. Within five years, by the Four- 
teenth Amendment, the nation declared that 
all men born or naturalized within the terri- 
tory of the United States should be citizens. 
W T ithin seven years, by the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment, the nation declared that no one should 
be deprived of his right to vote by reason of 
his race, color, or previous condition of servi- 
tude. Those three amendments embodied 
the scheme adopted by the thoughtful men of 
the time for the uplifting of those who had 
been held in slavery from the beginning of 
our history. 

You remember how difficult the question 
was, What was to be done with the poor 
black man held all his life a slave and now 
free? The answer, found in these amend- 
ments, was, Give him citizenship, give him 



suffrage, give him equal rights, and he will 
rise. 

I fear we are compelled to face the conclu- 
sion that the experiment has failed. The 
suffrage has been taken away from the black 
man in most of the States where he composes 
a large part of the population. The black 
man of the South, in general, no longer has 
practically the right of suffrage. The right 
to aspire to office, however humble, is also 
disputed, and in a great measure denied. 

A curious development has been seen with- 
in the past year along this line. President 
Roosevelt has appointed fewer black men in 
the South than did President McKinley. 
There are fewer black men now holding Fed- 
eral offices in the South than there were 
when President McKinley died, yet loud out- 
cries are to be heard from the greater part of 
the South against what is called President 
Roosevelt's policy of appointing black men to 
office, whereas under President McKinley, 
under President Harrison, under President 
Hayes — under all the preceding Presidents — 
nothing was said, although more black men 
were appointed. 



9 

A few nights ago a black man, holding an 
important office, attended an official reception 
at the White House. There has not been a 
time since the Civil War when black men 
have not held similar offices in the Federal 
Government. At official receptions, the black 
men holding those offices have always at- 
tended. They attended the receptions of 
Presidents McKinley, Cleveland and the others. 
Yet the attendance at President Roosevelt's 
was the signal for an outcry that the whites 
were being insulted by the appearance of this 
black officeholder. Now, I am not discussing 
the question. I am simply showing that the 
same state of official treatment of the blacks 
meets a change in the public feeling of the 
South ; that the right to aspire to office under 
the Federal Government which was formerly 
unquestioned is now questioned. And it is 
probably but a matter of time — not so very 
long a time — when the overwhelming weight 
of opinion of the white men will succeed in 
excluding blacks from all offices in the south- 
ern States. 

So the country has to face the failure of 
the plan which was adopted at the close of 



IO 

the Civil War, to lift the blacks from the con- 
dition in which they were left when they were 
freed from slavery by conferring upon them 
the suffrage. We can never throw off the re- 
sponsibility that rests on our people for the 
well-being of these men who were held in 
bondage for so many generations, and the new 
question of what can be done for them, now 
that the first attempt has failed, is one that 
challenges the best thought and the best pa- 
triotism of our country. 

But let me say this : You did not live and 
labor in vain in this field. The spirit in 
which you wrought still lives. You have 
created a higher type and sense of patriotism ; 
you have elevated the character of American 
citizenship ; and there live to-day, largely 
through your efforts and the example and in- 
spiration furnished by you and the men who 
labored with you in 1863, men enough in this 
land, devoted to their country, competent to 
meet the problems and perform the labors of 
good citizenship, to carry on the blessings that 
you saved from extinction to the remotest 
generation. And to that end, long live the 
Union League Club ! 



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